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Ok, so a couple days ago Bill Harris says that he might be playing the game of the year and it is an obscure title. Well, today he comes out with it. The game is Slaves to Armok II: Dwarf Fortress. The catch is it's an ASCII game and it was developed by a single person. Bill has a much better write up on it and he got me to give it a shot. Here is a quick quote:

Bill wrote:

Now there is a third, one of the most complex and demanding games I've ever played. It has infinite variation, the learning curve is tremendously difficult, and the level of world detail is absolutely unparalleled.

...

Let me just warn you now: this game will take you 5-10 hours to learn. The ASCII graphics are disorienting at first, there are a huge number of options available (and associated menus to learn to access the commands), and it seems totally overwhelming.

Trust me, it's not. It just takes time. After a few hours, you'll start translating the ASCII you see into a "real" world very easily, and along with that, the menus will become more familiar. You'll also stop trying to play it like a "game" and start thinking, because this game rewards thinking as much as almost any game I've ever played.

Like Bill said, it is devilishly confusing when you first jump in. He points to several guides and such and I suggest you use them all if you consider playing. Also, be prepared to be hopelessly lost for the first 45 minutes of actual gameplay. Even as I am writing this down it seems absurd that anyone would want to play a game under these conditions. However, this is perhaps the most complex game I have ever played. The amount of detail and variety in the game continues to shock me. Seriously.

The main game has you starting off with a team of seven dwarven pioneers who endeavor to start a new mountain colony. You tunnel into the mountain to construct your new home. You cut down trees and catch fish and basically do anything that you can imagine a group of dwarves might do when starting a settlement. I am just starting to get around the initial learning curve and bizarre interface and the game is digging it's teeth in. Suffice to say that I can already feel that I am going to be dreaming about this game tonight.

For anyone who has ever enjoyed a strategy game, I suggest you make your way over Bill's place and read his review. You are not going to want to miss out on what seems to be the most intellectually engaging game this year. Trust me.

"I like to hear people talking when they're not talking to me," I said. "It's soothing to know that I don't have to listen." -- Bill Harris describing a truism.

... I wanted to begin at the most basic level, if only to come at the game from a recently trendy (if controversial) design paradigm on discoverability that's flowed from mobile apps to many new indie games: "if you see a UI walkthrough, they blew it". This is admittedly extreme, but I wanted to begin at the bottom to let the game be its most challenging, and then work up from there.

I've never heard this "If you see a UI walkthrough, they blew it" concept before. Do designers or players really think that everything can be made so basic that there is no need to explain anything? Is this really a trend?

It's about as diametrically opposed to the design process of Dwarf Fortress as you can get too.

It is a principle in use for mobile apps and websites. In general, it's a useful UI principle: an interface should be intuitive (so you don't have to have extensive training to start using it) and discoverable (so it can teach you the more difficult parts on its own). Especially in a world where a million 99 cent apps and a trillion other websites are vying for attention, it makes sense that you'd want to make it as easy as possible for people to pickup and use your new thing.

Dwarf Fortress is a very different beast with a very different audience. Analyzing it by these UI standards is a bit like saying that that the Michelangelo's David makes a bad doorstop. That's not what it's there for, and not what the audience cares about.

That said, the UI in Dwarf Fortress is terrible. Look at how many different ways there are to navigate the various menus. Sometimes you use the arrow keys and sometimes you don't, sometimes the letters are relevant (so you have to memorize the shortcuts for everything), sometimes it uses the vi keys, sometimes it uses completely other paradigms. I think there are nearly as many interfaces as there are primary interaction modes, each slightly different. This isn't because of the ASCII, there were plenty of terminal-graphics programs that had consistent UI, and some even had relatively intuitive UI. Not to mention all of the other weird engineering decisions, like the way that replacing the graphics with tiles also replaces some of the letters in the text, because for some reason there is no indirection layer there.

Now, none of this matters to the fans. They're playing Dwarf Fortress because they can't get this experience any other way. The meaning of Dwarf Fortress is bound up in its deep systems, from which the players have inferred complex pictures of a Dwarven society. This is a triumph of systems design and conveying meaning through abstract mechanics. The UI is horrific, and there would be many more players if the game was even a tiny bit more accessible (I'd play more, for a start). But there is no substitute, so accessibility doesn't matter as much for its success.

The "UI should be intuitive" principle is attuned to a highly competitive market where you have seconds to catch and retain interest. It's a good principle in general, and is much nicer for the users, but as an economic factor in the design it is superseded in this case by the complete lack of direct competition. Any competitors will be going after a different subset of the potential players. Tarn Adams has created an uncloneable game, by virtue of a tenacity that has eventually resulted in a game of ridiculous depth that no one else will come close to approximating for a long time to come.

Maybe not. Dwarf Fortress is an alpha. Two more decades from now, a 1.0 release could feasibly include a completely re-worked interface that was as intuitive as an iPhone. I don't think that's likely, but I get of the purpose the UI design philosophy. It does not apply to an incomplete hobby of a single individual.

The color of the arm hair on one of my dwarfs is red. I'm afraid if I don't give him a room with a gold statue he will go crazy and kill everybody. There are cats everywhere. I hate cats and can't kill them fast enough to control the catpocalypse. And now you guys are complaining about the UI? I got real problems here.

The color of the arm hair on one of my dwarfs is red. I'm afraid if I don't give him a room with a gold statue he will go crazy and kill everybody. There are cats everywhere. I hate cats and can't kill them fast enough to control the catpocalypse. And now you guys are complaining about the UI? I got real problems here.

Cage all non-pet cats as soon as they're born to cut down on their breeding.

The color of the arm hair on one of my dwarfs is red. I'm afraid if I don't give him a room with a gold statue he will go crazy and kill everybody. There are cats everywhere. I hate cats and can't kill them fast enough to control the catpocalypse. And now you guys are complaining about the UI? I got real problems here.

The color of the arm hair on one of my dwarfs is red. I'm afraid if I don't give him a room with a gold statue he will go crazy and kill everybody. There are cats everywhere. I hate cats and can't kill them fast enough to control the catpocalypse. And now you guys are complaining about the UI? I got real problems here.

Your mistake is not starting off a fort with a kitten meat industry.

Well that's the best heavy-metal band name I've heard in a long time.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

Let them eat gay wedding cake.

Reaper81 wrote:

I am half-gay on my mother's side but I ethnically self-identify as "closeted lumber mill worker."

I think there is a market for a Dwarf Fortress-level of complexity game with a decent UI. You are right in that there are no substitutes, but a lot of people wish there were. Hence the excitement for Towns or A Game of Dwarves or Dwarfs?! (that have so far been inevitably shattered). I think people want the complex systems that lead to emergent behaviors. But I also think a lot of people (myself included) hate fighting against a game as much or more than the game's systems. Dwarf Fortress, bless it's heart, just feels too much like work most of the time.

I think folks want a substitute, just all the substitutes so far have been lacking.

I think folks want a substitute, just all the substitutes so far have been lacking.

I agree. Part of the problem is that most attempts so far copy the general theme but not the insane complexity (because even a fraction of the complexity requires Tarn Adam's dedicated focus and years of effort). If someone does manage to get emergent behaviors with more accessibility, then watch out...I expect Dwarf Fortress's UI to improve rapidly once that happens. But so far everyone has basically gone after UI and theme first, when the fans are clearly mostly interested in the emergence.

It's like my complaint about city builders that are really just puzzle games...totally misses the point.

Hence the excitement for Towns or A Game of Dwarves or Dwarfs?! (that have so far been inevitably shattered).

I think folks want a substitute, just all the substitutes so far have been lacking.

Yep. I hadn't played DF since before they added the third dimension. I picked up Towns, played it for a week, then started playing DF again with a vengeance. It took me a week to absorb all the changes, and probably a month to build a fort that could cope with noble demands (where I am now). And I still have to search for a fairly easy starting area and turn off invasions, and have a hard time building up a military that can stand up to a stiff breeze.

Eventually (even if it's a decade from now) I assume that Tarn Adam's will release the source of Dwarf Fortress as he has is other games. What will follow is a crazed period of hundreds of different groups taking the game in a thousand different directions. The three to four survivors of that competitions (which may take another decade to sort out) will be absolutely glorious.

So I bought Gnomoria when it appeared for $4 on Steam the other day. As a direct result I've installed Dwarf Fortress once again and its time to get lost once more.

On The Enchanted Planet I wait for the long eons of history to go by so I can make my first momentous embarkation since the last time I played, many years ago. (Its been like 30 minutes at this point, sheesh)

(Toady One) Quite a while ago, we put in a few short random snippets to enable some other things we wanted, so in the little world gen it cooked up tonight, Dumur the dwarven goddess of torture decided to release a skinless lizard demon upon the world "that it might bathe in misery forever." The fiend raised a goblin army and attacked the dwarven forces in the Swamp of Fountains, killing their general and the mayor and leaving their bodies in the muck a few months after recorded history began.

This appears not to have been lost on the necromancer Thomod. Twenty years later, she raised both of their bodies using the powers given to her by the bumble bee queen goddess of murder, Ume. Using their strength and that of her other zombies, Thomod erected a tower where she went on to train four apprentices and author essays about dying, such as More Doom and the Nuanced Death. Before she became obsessed with her own mortality, Thomod had been a great hunter of the giant dingo and the leader of a small village. The bumble bee called, however, and she abandoned her home and family.

Nearby, another family was also experiencing tragedy. Or dozens of families, since the vampire Olum had killed quite a few people over the years before anybody got suspicious. Now the vampire's own family was sundered -- she had to escape the watchful eyes of the neighbors and take up a simple life in one of the villages surrounding her former home of Masterweavers. Not long after, her husband Pictham became the lord of the town, and disputes over livestock and other matters flared up. It came to blows, and in the ensuing violence Pictham struck down his wife during an attack on the village. The recent blood-drinking murder spree in her village stopped, but people were probably too wrapped up in killing each other over cows to notice.

That was all world gen, so then I started playing.

The necromancer's great-grand-daughter Nikom was a fishery worker in a small hamlet, and Sothro was the vampire's great-grand-son, laboring as a farmer outside Masterweavers until the day they decided to get married. After a short journey, Sothro stepped into Nikom's cottage and said "This is my new home," making the move was official.

Since I've been doing camera tests, I thought I might as well fix up and check out the marriage travel code. The pairings are just picked locally or according to trade links, but I'd like to think they bonded over their sinister ancestors (or the strange childhood coincidence of having younger siblings gobbled up by different werebuffalo in the same year).

Looking at all of these amazing mods makes me think back to when Toady was talking about his worries and that the mod community would start to take control away from him. I wonder how much of that is actually happening? I've never played DF as anything but stock.

Toady would, I suspect, be in much better financial condition right now if he'd been more willing to collaborate and let people mod his project.

It would never have the broad appeal of Minecraft, but if other people could work on a UI for that game, one that became a first-class citizen and updated at full speed, it wouldn't shock me if he managed to pull in a million or two, instead of the $50K that trickles in each year. Even if he only got a partial slice of a bigger ecosystem, growing the pie is better for everyone.

The underlying game has some brilliant stuff going on. With the code equivalent of a couple of "editors", to pare back his crazier ideas to something more usable, and a UI person, he could be pretty darn comfortable.... and, probably, so could they.

An example: that Masterwork mod makes all leather into just 'leather', reducing search space and memory usage a ton. Who really cares if it's capybara or cave crocodile leather, you know? Reducing unnecessary complexity like that, all across the code base, would be a tremendous improvement.

I expect that his future financial condition is the one that's really at stake. Without the sort of overhauls that aren't getting done because they are boring to do Dwarf Fortress is going to have a really hard time competing with all of the "clones" that have arrived, and are beginning to show up in ever greater numbers.

Already I can't actually recommend Dwarf Fortress to anybody, and it pains me to say that. Instead of recommending Dwarf Fortress to my friends, with the natural caveats and reservations, I heartily recommend Gnomoria to them, with no reservations.

Toady would, I suspect, be in much better financial condition right now if he'd been more willing to collaborate and let people mod his project.

You're probably right, but I get the impression that Toady's fond of the bohemian setup he's got going. Plus the guiding principle behind Dwarf Fortress is an engine with the capacity to support a strong, detailed narrative. Pruning for simplicity's sake is a mistake. Often it doesn't matter what type of leather socks I'm wearing, but if I remember killing the giant capybara, and making it into needed socks, then the distinction verifies the historicity of the object.

I'd like an evolved version of Gnomoria or whatever clone with the depth of Dwarf Fortress, but I fear those projects are going to stop before anywhere near that level of interaction is possible. I wouldn't recommend those games because they're boring.

(Headline from Reddit): "Dwarf Fortress 2014, the first update in over two years, should drop at the beginning of next month. 'Time to activate the world now.' DS2014 will include diplomacy, succession, non-lethal combat, enormous trees, inheritance, and climbing, all to make a dynamic and changing world."

This is a fan-compiled changelog for the version of Dwarf Fortress following 0.34.11

Lethality reduction
• No immediate enemy recognition in cities to avoid fights to the death on the street.
• Conflicts and conflict levels are tracked (lethal/nonlethal).
• Critters can enter a state of terror from lethal battle, especially if they’re likely to lose.
• Draw and sheath weapons.
▬ People in cities won’t appreciate it if your weapon is out. (giggity)
• Combat mode can be switched to non-lethal in object testing arena.

Tracking
• Creatures leave tracks as they move unless they fly or are ghosts.
▬ Track descriptions depend on what left the track - feet, boots, turbans...
• Tracks can be found in their own vision mode.

Climbing*
• Climb up to branches, walls or down to ledges.
• Can't climb smoothed walls or ice walls.

Jumping*

• Can grab onto tiles when jumping or falling.

Entity sites

Demons
• Due to spoilers, Toady has revealed nothing about demon sites beyond that he has added them. Sites will contain ample amounts of randomly generated features however.

Dwarf Sites
• Hill Dwarves - farms and settlements on or near the surface.
• Fortresses - connect surface and first cavern layer.
• Deep sites - farms and settlements in the first cavern layer, below mountains.
• Noble Hierarchy - The King rules over a group of Dukes, who in turn rule over a series of Barons, who rule over the peasants.
• Player fortresses can now be non-destructively retired.*
▬ Retired fortresses behave as NPC fortresses but retain other information
▬ Retired fortresses can be reclaimed.

Other
AI can now reclaim sites ruined during worldgen. Both during or after worldgen.
All megabeasts can now attack and sometimes occupy civilization sites.
▬ These occupied sites cannot be reclaimed by the AI, but can by the player.*
▬ Retired fortresses can be reclaimed.
Civs will now continue to build settlements after worldgen, with some limitations. No roads or markets will be made in these post-worldgen sites
Armies inhabiting foreign conquered sites can now alter the sites to some degree.
▬ Goblins will begin building trenches and small towers “in human villages, elf sites and dwarf hill sites that have been taken after some time passes.”
▬ Invaders cause mayhem in conquered sites.

Entity Groups

• Armies now exist on the world map and move about during play, and you can encounter their camps.
• Bandits harass townspeople.
▬ Destroyed buildings, killed historical figures, things impaled on upright weapons...
▬ Killing their leader should often get them to leave.
• Invaders have camps with tents for soldiers and large tents for their commanders.
• Commanders chased out of their camp try to return due to their responsibility. Soldiers patrol the camp, raise the alarm.
• Townspeople no longer know exact positions of lairs.
• Entities have various “claims” to sites, rather than outright uncontested ownership every time.
• Goblins will hunt down a civilization’s leaders and kill them, instead of just slaughtering indiscriminately.
• Angered entities now form groups to track you down.

Inheritance
• Entity positions will be inherited as they do in worldgen.*
• Anyone who gets too old (as defined in the raws for their species) dies.
• Conceptions occur periodically, and schedule a birth to be resolved at the appropriate time.

▬ Taking over the world.
• People react to death depending on their personal traits.*
▬ May applaud or call you a murderer and spit at you. (Especially those pansy elves.)
Conversation revamp
• Time no longer paused while talking.

Personality and Conversation

Personality*
• Dwarves, and other sentient beings, now have personal values which are based on their cultural values but may deviate.*
• Dwarves now have traits which may not be value-neutral.*
• Dwarves will have “dreams” or life goals.*
▬ Creation of an artifact.

• Rumors will spread among NPCs, which they can then relay to you.
• Townspeople may lie to you, if their personality supports it.
Other
• New opening paragraph in Adventure mode depending on your starting situation.
• Companions now join for specific purposes, and will leave afterwards.
• Skulls are now less fragile, and won’t break as easily.*
• Invaders can now jump and climb when assaulting a fortress. Some limitations apply.*

Multi-tile trees*
• Falling leaves and fruit.
• Item clouds/spatter.
• Flowers.
//Is there a compilation of all the new plants getting added? Are there any randomly generated plants? Are we finally getting regionally limited plants?

Climbing sounds pretty cool! I wonder if in the future different entities will have different climbing abilities. Like maybe spiders would be able to climb even your painstakingly smoothed walls. Seems like climbing equipment could be implemented as well.